Former NATO Secretary General Does Startling One-Eighty on Trump

Apparently, the world's elite were all wrong about Donald Trump, states former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose own take on Trump has undergone a significant positive change.

In Anders Fogh Rasmussen's eyes, Donald Trump has gone from a "global threat" to a man who "has the potential to restore the world's confidence in the United States" in several months' time.

Before the US presidential election, former NATO Secretary General used to sing in unison with the Nordic political establishment, which was almost unilaterally pro-Clinton and viewed Trump as a grotesquely demonic figure that would inevitably shatter the world order.

In his recent U-turn opinion piece published by the financial outlet Market Watch, Fogh Rasmussen argued that elites got Trump all wrong and ventured that the 70-year-old businessman has the potential to do great things, such as "restoring reliable American leadership to the world stage in the coming years.

This clearly contradicts Fogh Rasmussen's own statements from only months ago. In an October 2016 interview, Fogh described Trump as "an end to the world order as we know it" in an interview with American magazine Politico. Rasmussen ventured that Trump's stance would undermine NATO by undercutting solidarity within the alliance, if implemented in full. Fogh was particularly alarmed by Trump's admiration for President Vladimir Putin and plans to promote a rapprochement with Russia. As Rasmussen put it, Putin had all reason for uncorking champagne when Trump was elected US president.

In numerous interviews with Danish media, former Danish Prime Minister warned that Trump, if put in charge of the US, would wreak havoc in the world, strengthen Russia at the expense of the EU and at worst lead to NATO's dissolution as he repeatedly called the alliance outdated and was reluctant to uphold NATO's collective defense principle.

"Trump stands for a new and dangerous protest line, supporting the forces that are in favor of the EU's dissolution in Europe. What we fear is that when Trump says 'America First,' it is a return to the isolationism that the United States represented in the 1930s, which led to an international disaster," Fogh told Danish daily Berlingske in September last year, where he also forecasted a Trump-propelled collapse of NATO and the EU.

On another occasion, Fogh said that Trump's habit of speaking favorably of Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Hussein does not live up to the roles that are and should be the US', "namely those of the world's policeman and the leader of the free society."

Apparently, Fogh found the necessary qualities in Trump on a second sight.

In his latest opinion piece, Rasmussen considerably toned down his rhetoric, anticipating Trump to become an unconventional president, but not necessarily a bad one.

"I believe President Trump will be unorthodox, challenge the status quo and look at the global stage with fresh eyes," Rasmussen wrote, venturing that Trump's administration was about to give the international arena a long-sought boost of energy and creativity.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen served as Danish Prime Minister from November 2001 to April 2009 and NATO Secretary General from August 2009 to October 2014. Today, Fogh Rasmussen runs a consultancy company of his own, Rasmussen Global, which advises Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.